Kitabı oku: «Mary Magdalen: A Chronicle», sayfa 3
CHAPTER IV
In the gardens of the palace the tetrarch mused. The green parasols of the palms formed an avenue, and down that avenue now and then he looked. Near him a Syrian bear, quite tame, with a sweet face and tufted silver fur, gambolled prodigiously. Up and down a neighboring tree two lemurs chased with that grace and diabolic vivacity which those enchanting animals alone possess. Ringed-horned antelopes, the ankles slender as the stylus, the eyes timid and trustful, pastured just beyond; and there too a black-faced ape, irritated perhaps by the lemurs, turned indignant somersaults, the tender coloring of his body glistening in the sun.
“It is odd that Pahul does not return,”the tetrarch reflected; and then, it may be for consolation’s sake, he plunged his face in a jar of wine that had been drained, in accordance with a recipe of Vitellius, through cinnamon and calamus, and drank abundantly.
Long since he had deserted Machærus. The legends that peopled its corridors had beset him with a sense of reality which before they had never possessed. The leaves of the baaras glittered frenetically in the basalt, and in their spectral light a phantom with eyes that cursed came and went. At night he had drunk, and in the clear forenoons he paced the terrace fancying always that there, beyond in the desert, Aretas prowled like a wolf. Machærus was unhealthy; men had gone mad there, others had disappeared entirely. It was a haunt of echoes, of memories, of ghosts also, perhaps too of reproach. And so, with his court, he returned to his brand-new Tiberias, where the air was serener, and nature laughed.
And yet in the gardens that leaned to the lake the tranquillity he had anticipated eluded and declined to be detained. Rumors that Herodias collected came to him with the stamp of Rome. One of his brothers was plotting against him; another, though in exile, was plotting too. It was the Herod blood, his wife said; and, with the intemperance of a woman whose ambition has been deceived, she taunted him with his plebeian descent.“Your grandfather was a sweep at Ascalon, a eunuch at that,” she had remarked; and the tetrarch, by way of reply, had been obliged to content himself by asking how, in that case, he could have been grandfather at all.
But latterly a new source of inquietude had come. At Magdala, Capharnahum, Bethsaïda, there, within the throw of a stone, was a Nazarene going about inciting the peasants to revolt. It was very vexatious, and he told himself that when an annoyance fades another appears. Life, it occurred to him, was a brier with renascent thorns. And now, as he gargled the wine that left a pink foam on his lips, even that irritation lapsed in the perplexing absence of Pahul.
Pahul was a butler of his, a Greek whom he had picked up one adventurous night in Rome, who had made himself useful, whom he had attached to his household, whom he consulted, and on whom he relied. Early that day he had sent him off with instructions to run the demagogue to earth, to listen, to question if need were, and to hurry back and report. But as yet he had not returned. The day was fading, and on the amphitheatre which the hills made the sun seemed to balance itself, the disk blood-red. The lemurs had tired, perhaps; their yellow eyes and circled tails had gone; the bear had been led away; only the multicolored ape remained, gnawing now with little plaintive moans at a bit of fruit which he held suspiciously in his wrinkled hand.
Presently a star appeared and quivered, then another came, and though overhead were streaks of pink, and, where the sun had been, a violence of red and orange, the east retained its cobalt, night still was remote – an echo of crotals from the neighboring faubourg, the cry of elephants impatient for their fodder, alone indicating that a day was dead.
In the charm of the encroaching twilight the irritation of the tetrarch waned and decreased. He lost himself in memories of the princess who had been his bride, and he wondered were it possible that, despite the irrevocable, he was never to see, to speak, to hold her to him again. Truly her grievance was unmeasurable, the more so even that she had not deigned to utter so much as a reproach. At the rumor of his treachery she had betaken herself to the solitudes, where Aretas her father was king, and had there remained girt in that unmurmuring silence which nobility raises as a barrier between outrage and itself, and which the desert is alone competent to suggest.
“It is he!”
The tetrarch started so abruptly that he narrowly missed the jar at his side. On noiseless sandals Pahul had approached, and stood before him nodding his head with an air of assured conviction. The ape had fled and a stork stepped gingerly away.
“It is he,” the Greek repeated – “John the Baptist.”
Antipas plucked at his beard. “But he is dead,” he gasped; “I beheaded him. What nonsense you talk!”
“It is he, I tell you, only grown younger. I found him in the synagogue.”
“Where? what synagogue?”
Pahul made a gesture. “At Capharnahum,”he answered, and gazed in the tetrarch’s face. He was slight of form and regular of feature. As a lad he had crossed bare-handed from Cumæ to Rhegium, and from there drifted to Rome, where he started a commerce in Bœtican girls which had so far prospered that he bought two vessels to carry the freight. Unfortunately the vessels met in a storm and sank. Then he became a hanger-on of the circus; in idle moments a tout. It was in the latter capacity that Antipas met him, and, pleased with his shrewdness and perfect corruption, had attached him to his house. This had occurred in years previous, and as yet Antipas had found no cause to regret the trust imposed. He was a useful braggart, idle, familiar, and discreet; and he had acquired the dialect of the country with surprising ease.
“There were any number of people,”Pahul continued. “Some said he was the son of Joseph, the son of – ”
“But he, what did he say? How tiresome you are!”
“Ah!” And Pahul swung his arms.“Who is Mammon?”
“Mammon? Mammon? How do I know? Plutus, I suppose. What about him?”
“And who is Satan?”
“Satan? Satan is a – He’s a Jew god. Why? But what do you mean by asking me questions?”
Pahul nodded absently. “I heard him say,” he continued, “that no man could serve God and Mammon. At first I thought he meant you. It was this way. I got into conversation with a friend of his, a man named Judas. He told me any number of things about him, that he cured the sick – ”
“Bah! Some Greek physician.”
“That he walks on the sea – ”
“Nonsense!”
“That he turns water into wine, feeds the multitude, raises the dead – ”
“Raises the dead!” And the tetrarch added in the sotto voce of thought, “So did Elijah.”
“That he had been in the desert – ”
“With Aretas?”
“No; I questioned him on that point. He had never heard of Aretas, but he said that in the desert this Satan had come and offered him – what do you suppose?The empire of the earth!”
Antipas shook with fright. “It must have been Aretas.”
“But that he had refused.”
“Then it is John.”
“There, you see.” And Pahul dandled himself with the air of one who is master of logic. “That’s what I said myself. I said this: ‘If he can raise the dead, he can raise himself.’ ”
“It is John,” the tetrarch repeated.
“I am sure of it,” the butler continued.“But he did not say so. Judas didn’t either. On the contrary, he declared he was not. He said John was not good enough to carry his shoes. I saw through that, though,” and Pahul leered; “he knew whom I was, and he lied to protect his friend. I of course pretended to believe him.”
“Quite right,” said the tetrarch.
“Yes, I played the fool. H’m, where was I? Oh, I asked Judas who then his friend was, but he went over to where a woman stood; he spoke to her; she moved away. Some of the others seemed to reprove him. I would have followed, but at that moment his friend stood up; a khazzan offered him a scroll, but he waved it aside; then some one asked him a question which I did not catch; another spoke to him; a third interrupted; he seemed to be arguing with them. I was too far away to hear well, and I got nearer; then I heard him say, ‘I am the bread of life.’ Now, what did he mean by that?”
Antipas had no explanation to offer.
“Then,” Pahul continued, “he said he had come down from heaven. A man near me exclaimed, ‘He is the Messiah;’but others – ”
“The Messiah!” echoed the tetrarch. For a moment his thoughts stammered, then at once he was back in the citadel. On one side was the procurator, on the other the emir of Tadmor. In front of him was a drunken rabble, wrangling Pharisees, and one man dominating the din with an announcement of the Messiah’s approach. The murmur of lutes threaded through it all; and now, as his thoughts deviated, he wondered could that announcement have been the truth.
“But others,” Pahul continued, “objected loudly. For a little I could not catch a word. At last they became quieter, and I heard him repeat that he was the bread of life, adding, ‘Your fathers ate manna and are dead, but this bread a man may eat of and never die.’ At this there was new contention. A woman fainted – the one to whom Judas had spoken. They carried her out. As she passed I could see her face. It was Mary of Magdala. Judas held her by the waist, another her feet.”
Antipas drew a hand across his face.“It is impossible,” he muttered.
“Not impossible at all. I saw her as plainly as I see you. The man next to me said that the Rabbi had cast from her seven devils. Moreover, Johanna was there – yes, yes, the wife of Khuza, your steward; it was she, I remember now, who had her by the feet. And there were others that I recognized, and others that the man next to me pointed out: Zabdia, a well-to-do fisherman whom I have seen time and again, and with him his sons James and John, and Salomè his wife. Then, too, there were Simon Barjona and Andrew his brother. Simon had his wife with him, his children, and his mother-in-law. The man next to me said that the Rabbi called James and John the Sons of Thunder, and Simon a stone. There was Mathias the tax-gatherer, Philip of Bethsaïda, Joseph Bar saba, Mary Clopas, Susannah, Nathaniel of Cana, Thomas, Thaddeus, Aristian the custom-house officer, Ruth the tax-gatherer’s wife, mechanics from Scythopolis, and Scribes from Jerusalem.”
The fingers of Antipas’ hand glittered with jewels. He played with them nervously. The sky seemed immeasurably distant. For some little time it had been hesitating between different shades of blue, but now it chose a fathomless indigo; Night unloosed her draperies, and, with the prodigality of a queen who reigns only when she falls, flung out upon them uncounted stars.
Pahul continued: “And many of them seemed to be at odds with each other. They wrangled so that often I could not distinguish a word. Some of them left the synagogue. The Rabbi himself must have been vexed, for in a lull I heard him say to those who were nearest, ‘Will you also go away?’ Judas came in at that moment, and he turned to him: ‘Have I not chosen twelve, and is not one of you a devil?’ Judas came forward at once and protested. I could see he was in earnest, and meant what he said. The man next told me that he was devoted to the Rabbi. Then Simon Barjona, in answer to his question, called out, ‘To whom should we go? Thou art Christ, the Son of God.’ ”
Antipas had ceased to listen. At the mention of the Messiah the dream of Israel had returned, and with it the pageants of its faith unrolled.
Behind the confines of history, in the naked desert he saw a bedouin, austere and grandiose, preparing the tenets of a nation’s creed; in the remoter past a shadow in which there was lightning, then the splendor of that first dawn where the future opened like a book, and in the grammar of the Eternal the promise of an age of gold.
Through the echo of succeeding generations came the rumor of that initial impulse which drew the world in its flight. The bedouin had put the desert behind him, and stared at another. Where the sand had been was the sea. As he passed, the land leapt into life. There were tents and passions, clans not men, an aggregate of forces in which the unit disappeared. For chieftain there was Might; and above, the subjects of impersonal verbs, the Elohim from whom the thunder came, the rain, light and darkness, death and birth, dream too, and nightmare as well. The clans migrated. Goshen called. In its heart Chaldæa spoke. The Elohim vanished, and there was El, the one great god, and Isra-el, the great god’s elect. From heights that lost themselves in immensity the ineffable name, incommunicable and never to be pronounced, was seared by forked flames on a tablet of stone. A nation learned that El was Jehovah, that they were in his charge, that he was omnipotent, and that the world was theirs.
They had a law, a covenant, a future, and a god; and as they passed into the lands of the well-beloved, leaving tombs and altars to mark their passage, they had battle-cries that frightened and hymns that exalted the heart. Above were the jealous eyes of Jehovah, and beyond was the resplendent to-morrow. They ravaged the land like hailstones. They had the whirlwind for ally; the moon was their servant; and to aid them the sun stood still. The terror of Sinai gleamed from their breastplates; men could not see their faces and live. They encroached and conquered. They had a home, they made a capitol, and there on a rock-bound hill Antipas saw David founding a line of kings, and Solomon the city of god.
It was in their loins the Messiah was; in them the apex of a nation’s prosperity; in them glory at its apogee. And across that tableau of might, of splendor, and of submission for one second flitted the silhouette of that dainty princess of Utopia, the Queen of Sheba, bringing riddles, romance, and riches to the wise young king.
She must have been very beautiful, Antipas with melancholy retrospection reflected; and he fancied her more luminous than the twelve signs of the zodiac, lounging nonchalantly in a palanquin that a white elephant with swaying tail bal anced on his painted back. And even as she returned, with a child perhaps, to the griffons of the fabulous Yemen whence she came, Antipas noted a speck on the horizon that grew from minim into mountain, and obscured the entire sky. He saw the empire split in twain, and in the twin halves that formed the perfect whole, a concussion of armies, brothers appealing against their kin, the flight of the Ideal.
Unsummoned before him paraded the regicides, convulsions, and anarchies that deified Hatred until Vengeance incarnate talked Assyrian, and Nebuchadnezzar loomed above the desert beyond. His statue filled the perspective. With one broad hand he overturned Jerusalem; with another he swept a nation into captivity, leaving in derision a pigmy for King of Solitude behind, and, blowing the Jews into Babylon, there retained them until it occurred to Cyrus to change the Euphrates’ course.
By the light of that legend Antipas saw an immense hall, illuminated by the seven branches of countless candelabra, and filled with revellers celebrating a monarch’s feast. Beyond, through retreating columns, were cyclopean arches and towers whose summits were lost in clouds that the lightning rent. At the royal table sat Belsarazzur, laughing mightily at the enterprise of the Persian king; about him were the grandees of his court, the flower of his concubines; at his side were the sacred vases filled with wine. He raised one to his lips, and there on the frieze before him leapt out the flaming letters of his doom, while to the trumpetings of heralds Cyrus and his army beat down the city’s gates.
It passed, and Antipas saw Jerusalem repeopled, the Temple rebuilt, peace after exile, the joy of bondage unloosed. For a moment it lasted – a century or two at most; and after Alexander, in chasing kings hither and thither, had passed with his huntsmen that way, Isis and Osiris beckoned, and the descendants of the bedouin belonged to Goshen again, and so remained until Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with them utterly had not Juda Maccabæus flaunted his banner, and the Roman eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superberthan ever, and from the throne of David, Antipas saw the upstart that was his father rule Judæa.
With him the panorama and the kaleidoscope of its details abruptly ceased. But through it all the voices of the prophets had rung more insistently with each defeat. The covenant in the wilderness was unforgetable; in the chained links of slavery they saw the steps of a throne, the triumph of truth over error, peace over war, Israel pontiff and shepherd of the nations of the world.
The expectation of a liberator who should free the bonds of a people and definitively re-create the land of the elect possessed them utterly; his advent had been constantly awaited, obstinately proclaimed; the faith in him was unshakeable. Palestine was filled with believers praying the Eternal not to let them die before the promise was fulfilled; the atmosphere itself was charged with expectation.
And as the visions rushed through his mind, Antipas fell to wondering whether that covenant was as meaningless as he had thought, or whether by any chance this rabbi who had been arguing at Capharnahum could be the usher of Israel’s hope. If he were, then indeed he might say good-bye to his tetrarchy, to his dream of a kingdom as well.
“Yes,” Pahul repeated, “the Son of God!”
Antipas had been so far away that now he started as one does whom the touch of a hand awakes. To recover himself he leaned over and plunged his face in the jar. The wine brought him courage.
He must be suppressed, he decided.
“But,” the butler continued, “I – ”
The frontal of the palace was set with lights. The parasols of the palms had turned from green to black, the stars seemed remoter, the sky more dark. From beyond came the call and answer of the sentinels.
Antipas stood up. A fringe of his tunic was detained by a rivet of the bench on which he had sat; he stooped to loose it; something moist touched his fingers, and as he moved to the palace the black-faced ape sprang at his side and nibbled at the jewels on his hand.
CHAPTER V
The house of Simon Barlevi was gray, and in shape an oblong. It had a flat roof laid with a plaster of lime, about which was a fretwork of open tiles. Beneath, for doorway, was a recess, surmounted by an arch and covered with a layer of mud. On each side was a room.
In the recess, sheltered from the sun and visited by the breeze, Simon stood. His garments were white, and where they were not they had been neatly chalked. On the border of his skirt and sleeves were the regulation fringes, and on his forehead and about his left arm the phylacteries which Pharisees affect. He was not pleasant to the eye, but he was virtuous and a strict observer of the Law.
In the room at his left were mats and painted stools, set in the manner customary when guests are awaited. For on that day Simon Barlevi was to give a little feast, to which he had bidden his friends and also a rabbi whom he had listened to in the synagogue, and with whose ideas he did not at all agree. Save for the mats and stools, and a lamp of red clay, the room was bare.
In front of the house was a bit of ground enclosed by a hedge of stones; and now as Simon stood in the recess a guest appeared.
“Reulah!” he exclaimed, “the Lord be with you.”
And Reulah answering, as etiquette required,“Unto you be peace, and to your house be peace, and unto all you have be peace,” the two friends clasped hands raised them as though to kiss them, then each withdrawing kissed his own hand, and struck it on his forehead.
Singularly enough, host and guest looked much alike. Simon had the appearance of one conscious of and strong in his own rectitude, while Reulah seemed humbler and more effaced. Otherwise there was not a pin to choose between them.
To Simon’s face had come an expression of perplexity in which there was zeal.
“I was thinking, Reulah,” he announced,“of the rabbi who is to break bread with us to-day. His teaching does not comfort me.”
Reulah was unlatching his shoes. “Nor me,” he interjected.
“On questions of purity and impurity he seems unscrupulously negligent. I have heard that he is a glutton and a wine-bibber. I have heard that he despises the washing of the hands.”
“Whoso does,” Reulah threw back,“will be rooted out of the world.”
Simon nodded; a smile of protracted amiability hovered in the corners of his mouth. For a moment he played with his beard.
“I think,” he added, “that he will find here food in plenty, and counsel as well.”
Reulah closed his eyes benignly, and Simon, in a falsetto which he affected when he desired to impress, continued in gentle menace:
“But I have certain questions to put to him. Whether water from an unclean vessel defiles that which is clean. Whether the flesh of a dead body alone defiles, or the skin and bones as well. I want to see how he will answer that. Then I may ask his opinion on points of the ritual. Should the incense be lighted before the high-priest appears or as he does so. Is or is not the Sabbath broken by the killing of the Paschal lamb? Why is it lawful to take tithe of corn and wine and oil, and not of anise, cummin, and peppers? In swearing by the Temple, should one not first swear by the gold on the Temple? and in swearing by the altar, should one or should one not first swear by the sacrifices on it? These things, since he preaches, he must know. If he does not – ”
And Simon looked at his friend as who should say: What is there wanting in me?
“If I may be taught another duty I will observe it,” said Reulah, sweetly.
At this evidence of meekness Simon grunted. Two other guests were approaching. On the edges of their tallîth were tassels made of four threads which had been drawn through an eyelet and doubled to make eight. Seven of these threads were of equal length, but the eighth was longer, and, twisted into five knots, represented the five books of the Law. The right hand on the left breast, they saluted their host, and placing in turn a hand under his beard, they kissed it. A buzz of inquiries followed, interrupted by the coming and embracing of newer guests, the unloosing of sandals, the washing of feet.
As they assembled, one drew Simon aside and whispered importantly. Simon’s eyes dilated, astonishment lifted him, visibly, like a lash, and his hands trembled above his head.
“Have you heard,” he exclaimed to the others – “have you heard that the Nazarene whom I invited here, and who pretends to be a prophet, allowed his followers to pluck corn on the Sabbath, to thresh it even, and defended and approved their violation of the Law? Have you heard it? Is it true?”
Reulah quaked as one stricken by palsy. “On the Sabbath!” he moaned.“On the Sabbath! Why, I would not send a message on Wednesday, lest perchance it should be delivered on the Sabbath day. Surely it cannot be.”
But on that point the others were certain. They were all aware of the scandal; one had been an eye-witness, another had heard the Nazarene assert that he was“Lord of the Day.”
“This is monstrous!” Simon cried.
“He declared,” the eye-witness continued,“that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”
“It is monstrous!” Simon repeated.“The command to do no manner of work is absolute and emphatic. The killing of a flea on the Sabbath is as heinous as the butchering of a bullock. The preservation of life itself is inhibited. Moses had the son of Shelomith stoned to death for gathering sticks on it. Shammai oc cupied six days of the week in thinking how he could best observe it. It is unlawful to wear a false tooth on the Sabbath, and if a tooth ache it is unlawful to rinse the mouth with vinegar.”
“Yet,” objected Reulah, “it is lawful to hold the vinegar in the mouth provided you swallow it afterward.”
No one paid any attention to him. Simon’s indignation increased. Of the thirty-nine Abhôth he quoted twelve; he showed that the Nazarene had violated each one of these prohibitions against labor; he showed, too, that by his subsequent speech and bearing he had practically scoffed at the Toldôth, at the synagogue which had drawn it up as well.
“If the Sadducees were not in power, Jerusalem should hear of this. As it is – ”
Whatever resolution he may have intended to express remained unuttered. A silence fell upon his lips; his guests drew back. At the step stood the Nazarene, behind him his treasurer, Judas of Kerioth. For a second only Jesus hesitated. He stooped, undid his shoes, and moved to where Simon stood. The latter bowed constrainedly.
“Master,” he said, “we awaited you.”
At this his friends retreated into the little room. Reulah reached the middle seat of the central mat first and held it, his nostrils quivering at the envy of the others.
Preceded by their host, Jesus and Judas found places near together, and, the usual ablutions performed, the customary prayers recited, lay, the upper part of the body supported by the left arm, the head raised, the limbs outstretched.
On the stools were dishes of stewed lentils, milk, and cakes of mashed locusts. Reulah ate with the tips of his lips, greedily, like a goat. Judas, too, ate with an air of hunger. The Master broke bread absently, his thoughts on other things. These thoughts Simon interrupted.
“Rabbi” – and to his wide mouth came the sneer of one propounding a riddle already solved – “it is not meet, is it, to thresh on the Sabbath day? Yet since you permit your followers to do so, how are we to distinguish between what is lawful and what is not?”
The Master raised his eyes. The dawn was in them, high noon as well.
“Show yourself a tried money-changer. Choose that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”
Simon blinked as at a sudden light.
“But,” he persisted, “in seeking to observe the Law, there is not a jot or tittle in it that can be rejected.”
With an acquiescence that was both vague and melancholy, Jesus looked the Pharisee in the face.
“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added unto you – ”
He would have said more, perhaps, but a woman who had entered from the recess approached circuitously, and kneeling beside him let a tear, long as a pearl, fall upon his unsandalled feet.
Judas’ heart bounded; he glared at her, his eyes dilating like a leopard preparing to spring. At once he was back in the circus, gazing into the perils and the splendors of a woman’s face, telling himself with reiterated insistence that to hold her to him would be the birthday of his life; and here, within reach of his hand, was she whom in the din of the chariots he had recognized as the one woman in all the world, and who for one moment the day before had lain unconscious in his arms.
Reulah sat motionless, his mouth agape, a finger extended. “The paramour of Pandera,” he stammered at last; and lowering his eyes, he looked at her covetously from beneath the lids.
Simon, too, sat motionless. There was rage in his expression, hate even – that hatred which the beautiful excites in the base. Time and again he had seen her; she was a byword with him; from the height of her residence she looked down on his mean gray walls; her luxury had been an insult to his abstinence; and with that zest which a small nature takes in the humiliation of its superior, he determined, in spite of her manifest abjection, to humiliate her still more.
“If this man,” he confided to his neighbor, “has in him anything of that which goes to the making of a prophet, he will divine what manner of woman she is. If he does not, I will denounce them both.” And nourishing his hate he waited yet a while.
The Master seemed depressed. The great secret which in all the world he alone possessed may have weighed with him. But he turned to Mary and looked at her. As he looked she bent yet lower. The marvel of her hair was unconfined; it fell about her in tangling streams of gold and flame, while on his feet there fell from her tears such as no woman ever shed before. In the era of primitive hospitality the daughters of kings had not disdained to unlatch the sandals of their fathers’ guests; but now, at the feet of Mercy, for the first time Repentance knelt. And still the tears continued, unstanched and unde tained. Grief, something keener still perhaps, had claimed her as its own. She bent lower. Then Misery looked up at Compassion.
The Master stretched his hand. For a moment it rested on her head. She quivered and clutched at her throat; and as he withdrew that hand, in which all panaceas were, from her gown she took a little box, opened it, and dropping the contents where the tears had fallen, with a sudden movement she caught her hair and poured its lava on his feet.
An aroma of beckoning oases filled the small room, passed into the recess, mounted to the roof, pervaded and penetrated it, and escaped to the sky above.
And still she wept. Judas no longer saw her tears, he heard them. They fell swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain. A sob broke from her, but in it was something which foretokened peace, the sob which comes to those who have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly intercept its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little box fell from her and broke. The noise it made exorcised the silence.
The Master turned to his host. “I have a word to say to you.”
Simon stroked his beard and bowed.
“There was once a man who had two debtors. One owed him five hundred pence, the other fifty. Both were poor, and because of their poverty the debt of each he forgave.”
For an instant Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, “Tell me, Simon,” he inquired, “which was the more grateful?”
Simon assumed an air of perplexity, and glanced cunningly from one guest to another. Presently he laughed outright.
